Create an experience with Kristina Mah

Kristina Mah (born in Manila, Philippines) is a new media artist, researcher, and karate-ka living and working on Gadigal-Wangal land (Sydney), Australia. Her work is positioned at the intersection of philosophy, science, art, and design. Her research draws inspiration from ancient wisdom traditions and emphasises embodied ways of knowing and lived experience. 

Kristina has practiced karate for over 30 years, and she has competed at the highest level in her sport since 2001. She is currently ranked number 1 in Australia in her event, and she is the current Oceania Champion and Australian Champion. 

Kristina became World Karate Champion in 2010. She has won and achieved podium finishes at multiple Premier League and international tournaments. In 2020, Kristina made a bid for the Tokyo Olympics in her sport, in the 61 kg female kumite event and represented Australia at the Olympic Qualification Tournament in Paris in 2021. This was historic event for karate, as it was the first time karate has been included in the Olympics Games and the sport will not be part of the Paris 2024 program. 

Kristina is a 5th Dan (Renshi) black belt and trains and teaches karate at Miyagi Kan Karate, in Bankstown, Sydney's south-west. She has remained a student of the same coach, 9th Dan, Hanshi George Barounis since she was 12 years old. She was an NSW Institute of Sport athlete between 2011–2013 and 2019-2023. She was on the Sydney Uni Elite Athlete Program between 2001-2006, 2007-2009, and 2019-2023. 

In tandem to her sporting career, Kristina has been a voracious student. Kristina has a Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy and French Studies) and a Bachelor of Design Computing from The University of Sydney. She completed a year at the College of Fine Arts (now Art and Design) at the University of New South Wales, graduating with first-class Honours. In Spring 2023, Kristina graduated from The University of Sydney with a PhD in human-computer interaction. 

She has published in the Journal of the Association of Computing Machinery, Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Interactions Magazine, and top-tier international conferences in human-computer interaction. Her artwork has been exhibited in Australia and Singapore.and she recently graduated from her PhD in Human-Computer Interaction in 2023. She integrates somatic, contemplative, and movement-based practices as modalities of understanding wisdom and compassion for art and design. 

Kristina is an emerging artist and her creative art practice draws on ritual, gesture and movement, cosmology, and mystic symbolism to inform tangible, spatial, and sensory experiences and embodied narratives. Her work combines video, photography, mixed media, and interactive technologies addressing the nature of consciousness and being, agency, and compassion within social, cultural and ecological contexts. She has exhibited work at Vivid Sydney, Gallery Lane Cove and Bankstown Arts Centre. 

Her most recent work, "Oro", a public art installation, is currently being exhibited on the Court House Reserve in Bankstown as part of Hyperreal Amble Art Walk for Bankstown Arts Centre until March. This personal work uses the ancient symbol of the ouroboros, the snake devouring its own tail to represent an eternal cycle of destruction, rebirth and alchemy. “Oro” symbolises an ongoing process of inner alchemy through digesting our identity, self and being in the world. We realise that we are caught in a messy and nonlinear process that moves in between extremes, of black and white, masculine and feminine, yin and yang, light and dark. By challenging our inner paradoxes, shedding what doesn’t serve and accepting all that is, we can allow our inner gold to shine through.

http://www.unlonelyisland.net